1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a content-certified e-mail (electronic mail) service system allowing a third party to certify objectively the contents of an e-mail sent from a sender to a destination on a network such as the Internet.
2. Description of the Related Background Art
In the current postal system in Japan, it is known that the content-certified postal service is available to have the text contents of a postal matter certified by the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications. A content-certified mail can be an evidence as to what kind of contents that the mail has, a sender sent the mail and a receiver received the mail. Thus, the content-certified postal service is used particularly when delivering documents pertaining to law or a declaration of intent, or a record of the mailing date is necessary.
Recently, with wide spread use of e-commerce (electronic commerce), such an on-line mail-order service on the Internet, an increase in the cases is predicted, where notices pertaining to law, such as notices of cooling-off, are sent by e-mails. However, the e-mail system on the Internet has not established an organization for providing a service such as the current content-certified postal service to have the contents of a mail certified by a third party.
If a sender wants to use the current content-certified postal service, the sender has to (1) prepare a hard copy of text in triplicate, and (2) take the hard copy in triplicate to a postal office where postal matters are collected and delivered, or a postal office designated by the postmaster of a local post office. Thus, the current service is tedious and time-consuming for e-mail users. Because the current service is quite inconvenient, there has been a need to establish a system to have the contents of an e-mail certified in the original form of electronic media.